Hipster Love, Part II

I've shared my love for hipsters on here before.  I believe I mentioned that I laugh at them and want to befriend them at the same time.  I find their skinny jeans amusing and their love of local endearing.  Their sense of irony, however, implies a cultural awareness and distance that I could never hope to achieve.

Of course, my mind went straight to my hipster-love when I clicked the link to this article on How to Live Without Irony.  The writer lambastes our entire generation for its trademark use of irony, which she characterizes as a "self-defensive mode" that acts as "preemptive surrender" to any critique or criticism.  While the scope of her attention goes beyond the hipster, she sees the hipster as icon of this irony that characterizes all that Millennial do and are.

I found especially interesting one little list, thrown in sideways:

Where can we find other examples of nonironic living? What does it look like? Nonironic models include very young children, elderly people, deeply religious people, people with severe mental or physical disabilities, people who have suffered, and those from economically or politically challenged places where seriousness is the governing state of mind.

 What a crazy group of bedfellows.  The funny thing is that this list could be one of people that Christians see as especially blessed by God.  The writer goes forward with the small child example to illustrate her point, but I am more intrigued by, well, everyone else on this list.

I'm particularly interested in the "deeply religious people" category, because I might fit in there, but also because that is the category that is out to bring others in.  Yet the writer doesn't mention religion as a solution to irony.  Yet its ghost is there.  Here's the last question on her irony self-inventory -- are you seeing the word "conversion" as well?

The most important question: How would it feel to change yourself quietly, offline, without public display, from within?